top ten schools

beardedchicken

hey
i don't know if this is the appropriate forum to ask this, but what with all the furore over the publication of the top 10 schools to send students to UCD and trinity, i was wondering if anyone knows where i can find that list- i've already checked ireland.com, and the independent's site, but no luck- so anyone know??
thanks!

eth0_

Maybe try the dept of education
http://www.education.ie/home/home.jsp?category=10917&language=EN

or do a search on Unison.

sceptre

Is this the list published in the Sunday Times yesterday? If so, post back and I'll scan it and post it.

beardedchicken

i presume so, but i thought it was actually released some time last week. hmm...confusing! either way, if you have a url for that article that would be great, or indeed if you could scan it or whatever!!

thanking you!

Chaos-Engine

It isn't the top ten schools.
Its merely which schools sent the greatest numbers of pupils to those universities.
The Institute was of course highest but the Irish Times and Independent reports failed to see that the Institute has the largest 6th year population in the country (approx 800).

Percentage wise the institute sents a relativly small amount of its students to trinity and UCD (about 12%).

The statisitcs publish in the Herald on Friday (or Saturday not sure which day) are much more comprehensive and produce much more accurate results to show which are the best schools...

A better measure would be the average and standard deviation results in regarding to CAO points form the various schools. Not which students went where...

beardedchicken

oh, i know it's not a comprehensive list of the top schools in the country, it's just the numbers going to trinity and UCD, as you said- but it's a start, and i was still interested to find out, though, because according to ucd's own research, most of their first year undergraduate intake is from south county dublin and surrounding areas anyway! i'd be interested to know who goes where from what school.

i'm sure your idea for a better way to measure performance would be much better, but no one in this country would ever dare to actually produce a fully comprehensive list of the top performing schools, points-wise - if they did, it would actually force the government and teachers to finally accept accountability for the shoddy, two-tier education system of this country.

also, does raymond kearns have a point in suggesting that teachers be paid based on performance? what do yiz think?

swiss

Moved to humanities, it's probably more relevant there (and they get a little more traffic anyway )

It will be interesting to see if publishing something relatively small like this will precipitate the start of a rankings scale for teachers. Although with the level of opposition from the like of unions, I wouldn't think that this will happen anytime soon.

Chaos-Engine

In regards to pay related to performance of students I agree but you just try and get the teachers to sign up to it.

A more workable system would be Dept of Education run schools(2nd level) of excellence. Free in but you must pass a entrance exam. This would provide a school/s for those that have the ability. And lets face it not all students do.... Its an idaea and yes its two-tier.
But the principle is based on ability to perform not pay....

sceptre

Sunday Times went for "something completely different" but I'm attaching the table anyway.

What they did was to take the top 50 schools that sent the most students to UCD and the 50 that sent most to TCD and calculated their ranking based on the numbers of pupils they had sitting the Leaving Cert in 2001.

Dunno if it'll be of any help

beardedchicken

thanks for that link. very illumintaing! i had my suspicions my old school would be on it, but i had no idea that 44% of my graduating class was in UCD! nuts!

although, it just proves how easily statistics can be manipulated to be something that they're not- 44% sounds big, but out of a class of around 55 or 56, that's not a lot of actual students, it's only about 24 or 25!

Shinji

I'm not sure what these stats are meant to "prove", frankly. For a start, obviously Dublin schools feature higher, because people from country areas don't necessarily have the means or the desire to go to university in Dublin... What would be more interesting is a table showing which schools sent most students to universities and to ITs overall, not just to the two big Dublin universities.

Not that that's even a great barometer of performance... I got more than enough points for my first choices in university but went off to work instead, which would have skewed my school's result that year by 2%. A few people like that and you've got an utterly unrepresentative result.

This is also why I don't believe in this ridiculous idea of grading teachers according to the exam performance of students. Not all students are created equal; I know my year in school had average leaving cert results far, far higher than the year before, but all the teaching staff were the same. I've known a couple of teachers who deliberately worked with very poorly performing students because they were good at getting those students to do better, but the overall average grades from those classes would still be terrible - a league table system would make those into "bad" teachers.

And of course there are cases like myself (and quite a few other people I know) who underperformed quite a bit in exams, but have found some of the instruction and education I got from teachers massively useful in my career since then.

Grading teachers by exam results is another tacit move towards removing the education from our education system, and turning it into a conveyor belt where people have information forced into them and then regurgitate it at the end, and those who regurgitate best are rewarded. That's not what school is supposed to be about - and that kind of total focus on examinations is utterly unhealthy, and is ultimately what has destroyed the British education and is fast-destroying the Irish education system which only a few years ago was one of the best in the world.

kaimera

Had it not to do with money?
The top 10 skools were like private or so and parents were paying big money for their kids to go.

It was a big thing that money is again dominating education. Those with the money can pursue their goals while those without it falter in their dreams.

On the subject of pay based on performance....

No. Altho I do agree some *really* brutal teachers dont deserve the normal rate of pay. [I've suffered from one or two of these]

Michael Collins

It was a big thing that money is again dominating education. Those with the money can pursue their goals while those without it falter in their dreams.

I'd have to disargee with this a bit. If your determined enough you should be able to get into whatever course you want, it takes work, but I think anyone is capable of getting in UCD or Trinity (which isn't the be all and end all either, and makes a joke of this "top 10 schools" idea)

Part of the reason the fee paying schools *appear* to do better is more than likely becuase the students parents are paying the fees and they make sure their children do the work, they put some pressure on them to go and study and stuff...not all now, but I'm sure some do.

Having said that though, having the money does make some difference, especially when it comes to college...